


The Rise and Fall of a Sith Empire

by Riverdaughter



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alderaan lives, Canon-Typical Violence, Darth Palagueis is smarter and doesn't die, Darth Sidious is still sinister and ugly, Emperor Palagueis is actually better than Sidious but not by much, Everybody Lives/Except you Windu, F/M, Gen, Skywalker and Amidala have a little rebellion, Tatooine (Star Wars), The Empire Rises, This is not the rebellion that you are looking for, and twins...but not in that order, and you Ki-Adi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23688166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riverdaughter/pseuds/Riverdaughter
Summary: (yes the title is a history joke...)Darth Palgueis plays his sabaac deck a little better and the Empire rises long before any Jedi come to Tatooine.An escaped padawan named Ben, the exiled princess of Theed and a courageous and kind slave-boy might be the unlikely catalysts of change and hope in a fallen galaxy. Very, very AU...Part I: Hope in Mos Espa
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker & Shmi Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52





	The Rise and Fall of a Sith Empire

**Author's Note:**

> Anakin is a bit overpowered here, but he also isn't suppressing his emotions or his abilities in a vain attempt to follow the Jedi code so not really impossible. Obi-Wan and Anakin are a lot closer in age here too.
> 
> Obi-Wan-15  
> Anakin -9  
> Padme - 12
> 
> Basically, don't expect the power structure to be the same as canon given how different this galaxy is. Also kudos to anyone who guesses the name of the runaway padawan near the end of the chapter.

People tell stories of the time before the Empire, when the Republic was still a fair and just government and slavery was illegal. Sometimes they even whisper about the jedi knights who were sworn to defend and protect and went gaily through the galaxy with lightsabers at their belts and other-worldly power in their hands. Anakin likes these stories even if he doesn’t believe them.

His mother remembers the time before Emperor Plaguis and she was a slave than as she is now.

So, Anakin dreams of knights, and swords of light but he doesn’t pin his hopes on them. He looks to his own skills to secure the freedom of his mother. He is good with machines and tools and when he can he stays up late tinkering and perfecting his designs so that one day soon they will all be free, his mother, his friends, even the strange new slave Ben who hasn’t yet learned to hold his tongue and hope for the future.

And if in his endless experiments he finds that little miracles happen, dropped tools don’t quite hit the ground and his hands work faster than human hands should he has learned that it is better not to dwell on the unexplainable.

It is a long hard life, the worse trade becomes the more swift Watto is to anger. No matter how quickly Anakin works or how much Shmi toils it is never enough to satisfy the growing temper of their owner. Ben makes things both more bearable and more complicated. He comes suddenly, one day when Anakin thinks he might be nine. It is hard to tell, years are measured differently in each system and Anakin is always hungry and so small for his age.

Unlike Anakin and Shmi Ben was not always a slave, but he has no family so when he was captured by pirates there was no one to rescue him. Watto wins him at a game of sabaac and since times are tight and the reach of the Empire is long there is no where for him to go, save for the shelter Shmi offers him in her home.

Having been freeborn, Ben does not take well to the life of a slave, he holds his head to high and looks people in their eyes (anywhere from one to fifty depending on the species), he talks when the slaves are silent and has a bad habit of drawing attention to himself.

Not that Anakin can really complain about attention without utter hypocrisy. Despite a life-long and occasionally life-saving ability to disappear into the long, hot shadows, trouble seems to follow in his footsteps.

When Anakin was small and scrawny and maybe four or five, he had the bad luck to make friends with the son of one of Jabba’s unfortunate slaves. Not that four-year old Anakin had known that at the time. He had just seen someone who was lonely and scared and whose mother had just died. He almost doesn’t remember the odd feeling of wrongness and then the sudden elation as the Kitster’s transmitter vanished.

Whatever he had done had worked, even if he hadn’t understood it at the time and Shmi had made sure that Kitster was disappeared to wherever tracker-less slaves went. Although no one had actually seen what happened, the mere fact that Anakin had been seen with Kit before he disappeared had made for a very bad few months. When he tries again with his own tracker nothing happens.

By the time he was seven Anakin had gained a reputation for trouble-making which was mostly warranted. It confused him sometimes, he knew that he was supposed to help people but helping people sometimes made trouble when not helping didn’t. Trouble was still better than not-helping. Anakin could handle trouble, not-helping made his chest hurt and his breathing go raspy and he could _feel_ the wrongness when the other people were hurt.

He was nine or maybe ten when the first white-shells came to Tatooine. Ben had only been with them a couple of months and Anakin was old enough to recognize the utter terror on the older boy’s face. Ben knew something about the white-shells or the Emperor they obeyed, and it scared him more than being a slave.

Ben was a shadow after that, he stayed in the shadows with Anakin as much as he could and walked as fast as he could between Watto’s and their hovel. Anakin didn’t really understand, if trouble came it was going to come whether they walked fast or slow. Ben’s bad feelings were just weird sometimes.

But not necessarily wrong.

A few months after the first white-shells, the rebellion came to Tatooine. Or at least that’s what the spacers said. Afterwards, when he was older and everything was clearer, Anakin realized that there hadn’t even been a real rebellion when he was nine. There hadn’t been enough time to set one up, but there _were_ fugitives and that is exactly who Anakin and Ben managed to run into.

The moment Ben caught sight of the long bright blade in the runaway’s hand everything changed. Quiet, furtive Ben who no longer looked people in the eyes, who jumped at shadows and never laughed; Ben the slave-boy vanished like water at noon. And in his place was someone Anakin had never seen before, a boy with bright eyes and clever, _determined_ curl to his lips.

Shmi had told Anakin, that when Ben had been made a slave he had lost his hope and now that the white-shells were here he had lost his will, that free, untrammeled thing that even transmitters and chains couldn’t lock away.

Anakin doesn’t know if Shmi was right, but if she was Ben has found his hope again and his will too. Anakin watches fascinated as the air shimmers around his friend, and then there are shouts and running and rocks falling sideways instead of down and Anakin wonders if Ben is like _him._ But he doesn’t dare pull down the walls he has built around his odd abilities until the runaway is free and clear, and the bright green light-blade is sheathed and he and Ben are safely back home.

A week later they are home early from the shop and the fuss in Mos Espa has died down and Anakin feels as safe as he ever does.

Ben is awfully worried at first when he asks about the sideways rocks and the shimmer in the air and he tries to pretend that he doesn’t know what Anakin is talking about. He is very clever and he side-steps the questions in ways that aren’t quite lies but aren’t the truth either. Anakin is small and always hungry and maybe nine years-old, but he isn’t dumb.

And that’s exactly what he tells Ben.

Finally Ben gives it up as a lost cause and admits that he made the rocks move, and yes he once knew the runaway with the energy sword and the wild black hair. He doesn’t say much, but Anakin has learned to trust Ben in the last months and something tells him that this is _right_. So as carefully as he can he pokes a hole in the wall around his light and lets a ray of warm sunshine out through the chink.

Ben’s eyes go almost as wide as they did when he first saw his friend.

Anakin claps his hands and the ray obediently rolls itself into a little dancing ball of light and settles in Anakin’s hands. And then because he doesn’t know what else to do, and Ben looks worried he holds it out and lets it float into Ben’s frozen fingers.


End file.
